Aggression in psychology can be seen as a behaviour that is intended to cause pain or harm physically or emotionally. From a nurture perspective aggression is decided not by your genes but by the community and role models. According to Bandura children copy their role models, as such it is important to have non-aggressive parents/guardians or other role model figures in their upbringing so as to have a non aggressive personality. Bundura also states that behaviour is learned through rewards, this means that if a child aggressively bullies another child and receives a reward from this behaviour (sweets, or enjoyment), then they will repeat this behaviour in future. The Stanford Prison experiment is another example of how aggression is caused by nurture not nature. In this experiment guards conformed to how they think they should act and became aggressive when normally they weren’t.
How do these experiments support nurture?
What other explanation could there be for the aggression shown in the Bobo doll experiment and the guards in the Stanford Prison experiment?
By Adrian Tai and Artienne Bakker-Szumer
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's hard to see aggression as a product of nature, it's most probably a nurture- sided psychological happening. Children do copy their role models, and as said it's important for them to grow up in a friendly, non-agressive household. If children are exposed to aggression in the household and see that other people get rewards as a result of copying it, they'll next to always copy the behaviour.
ReplyDeleteIn the bobo doll experiment, aggression was shown most prominently by those kids that were shown an aggressive role model to copy. very few of them were aggressive as a result of being shown a non-agressive role model, again proving this argument for nurture. Unlike many other things, aggression can most likely be put straight down to nurture, as it is a showing of how kids are brought up, who they look up to, and what other people show them as to whether or not they are aggressive.
fraser 10N
These experiments support nurture because the subjects displayed aggressive behaviour when it was rewarded. For example, aggressive behaviour was displayed by the children in the bobo doll experiment because it was rewarded with lollies or sweets. This can be seen in everyday instances, for example, when a child shows aggression towards another child and are not punished, they believe that they can get away with the act again. Therefore, the aggressive act will be repeated and depending on whether they are punished depends whether or not the act will occur again.
ReplyDeleteOther explanations of aggression in the Bobo doll experiment and Stanford Prison experiment are that the subjects could have felt that aggressive behaviour was what the experimenter wanted to see over the course of the experiment, also known as demand characteristics. Another reason could be that they were playing along with the social roles that that are portrayed in society. For example, in the Stanford prison experiment the subjects who played the guards could have thought they had the be aggressive due aggression being seen as the behaviour displayed by guards in movie, ect.
Maddie R 10P
How do these experiments support nurture?
ReplyDeleteThe Experiments state that encouragement (re-enforcement) is the key reason aggressive behaviour is repeated. Assuming repetition is the focus of the experiment; the reason for repeated aggression is re-enforcement, which is not in bred, and therefore Nurture.
What other explanation could there be for the aggression shown in the Bobo doll experiment and the guards in the Stanford Prison experiment?
The participants may have been exhibiting demand characteristics, or even portraying the roles they feel most comfortable with (i.e. Nature). In the Prison experiment; guards were dressed like the guards from popular movies, a brutal archetype which the simply began play-acting. The experimenter himself, instead of remaining neutral, took an active role in the experiment; during he admits he influenced the experiment. The experimenter could have influenced the results from there.
How do these experiments support nurture?
ReplyDeleteThe experiments mentioned (Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment) support the nurture argument because they show that the cause of aggression is not influenced by genes, but by role models. In the Bobo Doll Experiment, the children copied the aggressive behaviour displayed by the role models even if they generally had a non-aggressive disposition. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the ‘guards’ “relished their roles and became increasingly brutal by inventing new forms of punishment such as solitary confinement (in a cupboard) and cleaning the toilets with bare hands” (Miss O’Neill, 2008 – Red Book). This shows the way “well-adjusted university students became brutal overseers” (Miss O’Neill, 2008 – Red Book).
What other explanation could there be for the aggression shown in the Bobo doll experiment and the guards in the Stanford Prison experiment?
An explanation for the aggressive behaviour in the Stanford Prison Experiment is that the participants were simply acting out the parts they had been told to play from seeing their roles played in movies such as Cool Hand Luke. The movie portrays stereotypical brutal prison guards, wearing reflective sunglasses. When asked about their portrayal of the guards many said that with the sunglasses on, they felt they were given a ‘cue’ to act brutally.
MADDY M 10N
The guards in the stanford prsion experiment were simply acting in a way that they thought was expected of them. Some of the subjects did not grow up in a violent household and did not have violence in their biological makeup. This is the same for the bobo doll experiment. Both of these experiments demonstrate that people learn through observation. However I personally believe that it is the environment that you have grown up in and whether you have been exposed to large amounts of violence, that will ultimately decide whether you are more likely to act in a volent manner.
ReplyDeleteShannon :)
These experiment support nature because the child and the guards acted the way they did due to rewards and thinking that its the right way to act after viewing other role models. The people were not born with that idea on how to act but instead learned it through classical and operant conditioning, learning via association/ learning via reward and punishement.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think there are any reasons for the aggression. In the bobo doll experiment the children saw their older role models and used classical conditiong to work out how they should act when in the room in order to have a good time and to be like their role model. In the Prision Experiment the guards developed their own idea on how to act from watching movies abou prision guards in the past. They believed that they had to be tough and they had to be strict and beat up the prisioners in order to be a good guard.
Amanda